Results tagged “night class” from PEDABLOGUE

This morning I was pointed to an article on "The Five Mental Habits of Innovative People" that I found interesting, because it identifies the skillsets I would want to foster in my students, especially in a course related to creativity (like writing).

Drawing from research by Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen at BYU, called "How Do Innovators Think?" [available at Harvard Business Publishing's neat "Creativity at Work" page, which is worth a look-see], Jessica Stillman isolates (and explains) these five "mental habits":

* Associating * Questioning * Observing * Experimenting * Networking

The researches suggest 'questioning' is really the engine that drives all of the above, yet "questioning on its own doesn’t have a direct effect without the others."

In my classes, I have been a big advocate for question-generation -- it is the trigger behind all "inquiry" -- creative and scholarly -- and it protects the teacher from doing all the thinking for the student (without thinking, no learning!). I run students through an activity I call 'question-storming'; I often give them prompts for writing that encourage them to raise their own questions-at-issue; I'll play devil's advocate to challenge them to question their own assumptions; etc.

When a writer approaches the blank page "questioning" rather than feeling as though they need to be the "authority" they are open to making discoveries through writing...and they never have block.

What would I add to the list? LISTENING.

By which I mean "Active Listening".

Although 'listening' (like 'reading') is related to 'observing', I don't think people think of 'listening' as a skill that leads to innovation and creativity. They think of it as a passive act, which it is not. Part of this assumption of passivity comes from the education system: we sit in desks our whole lives, listening, listening, listening...more than doing, creating, innovating. The invisible work of learning happens in our heads, if we are self-disciplined enough to pay attention and listen actively. But that skill is rarely cultivated or directly taught.

LISTENING is crucial to mastering the art of concentration, but it also factors into creativity. As a creative writer, I could never write dialogue if I didn't listen closely to how people actually speak -- and not just listening to the words, but also to the musicality of it. If I did not listen intensely I could not know what it means to be a reader, who mentally 'listens' to the author's voice as they read. Listening enables emulation and imitative learning, as well: when we listen, we see how others raise questions and discover the pathways available to us in an attempt to answer them. When we listen to an audience, we can test our own answers to questions by getting responses. So listening is a feedback loop into questioning. Listening fuels creativity. Not all creativity springs out from within us; sometimes it pools and settles in, before feeding into the outward flow.

If your teaching is in a rut, or if you want to try to do something innovative in your classroom to solve problems or enable excitement in the room, try listening to your students. You might learn something.

Peter Schmidt contributes an article to the Chronicle on the problem with the rising reliance on adjunct faculty across academe, called "Use of Part-Time Instructors Tied to Lower Student Success." I found this section interesting:

Of particular concern to some education researchers is the tendency of colleges to use part-timers to teach lower-level courses, as well as courses offered at night, when part-time students are most likely to be coming to campus.

"The reality is that both part-time faculty and part-time students are less engaged with the college," said Kay M. McClenney, director of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin.

In night classes, she said, "those realities collide," undermining students' chances of succeeding. She expects the situation to get worse in the current economic downturn, as people who cannot find jobs enroll at public colleges to learn new skills, and the colleges, facing tight budgets, turn to part-time instructors to meet rising demand.

Too often adjuncts get a bum rap. The issue, always, is "investment," and I do understand the logic. But too often, I think, we confuse being invested in an institution with being invested in a student's learning, or in a culture at large's education. Moreover, when an instructor has a deep investment in their field, probably through their scholarship, it is contagious -- even jaded students who don't feel a part of the campus life can catch the spark of intellectual curiosity from a teacher truly committed to his or her scholarship -- and that's all it takes to transform a class from a collision of apathy into a wellspring of collaborative inspiration. Those who hire adjuncts often emphasize teaching experience over scholarship; this could be a mistake. New teachers -- like ABDs -- sometimes have the passion for their field that can make all the difference in a student's life.

Schmidt's essay concludes with an interesting sidebar on "innovative contracts" for building a greater sense of investment and reward for adjunct faculty. Worth a look-see.

The article is a couple of years old, but it's worth noting: "College, My Way" by Kate Zernike, published in the NY Times in 2006, notes the rising transfer rates among college students is becoming the new normal -- claiming that "about 60 percent of students graduating from college attend more than one institution, a number that has risen steadily over at least the last two decades."

Though this number is higher nationally than it is on my own campus, I still don't find this rate of transfer surprising at all, because I've seen the increase in transferring firsthand. The NY Times article suggests that today's "Millennial" generation approach their curriculum just like they do their iPods, selecting courses like singles that they're loading up into their playlists, making increasingly granular choices regardless of "brand affiliation" (eg. a lack of commitment to one's "alma mater.") Admissions offices call the high churn rate of transfer courses "swirling" -- a term I associate with toilet bowl flushes rather than academics, but it's still an apt term. Swirling is what helicopter wings do and it can leave you dizzy and disoriented.

I often staff the "transfer orientation" that our campus hosts during the summer, when incoming transfer students sign up for their first courses... and I have to tell you, as much as I enjoy transfer students (because they usually bring fresh perspectives into the classroom), it's often a nightmarish webwork of complexity trying to figure out what courses a student still "needs" to graduate, despite the useful and helpful audits of our registrars. The sum (diploma) always means more to these students than the variables (courses) that add up to it, and -- coupled with financial pressures that are only rising over the years -- for too many students a "survivalist" mindset drives their learning: many students just want to cobble together a schedule so they can finish their long-suffering and have a degree. Perhaps the way colleges sell themselves contributes to the problem. If a degree is something that can be acquired if enough "stamps" are earned, then it doesn't matter where you get those stamps.

But it is a bit out of the ordinary to earn a degree from one college -- an institutional endorsement of one's educational status -- while still having a transcript that quilts together several different colleges that made their imprint on the student in some fashion outside of the penumbra of the college giving the degree. Do these students feel attachment to their degree-granting institution as "alums" as much as traditional four year students do? Institutional identity evaporates beneath this to some degree, rending the early colleges that the student transferred out of as functionaries toward the final degree. I can imagine some minor forms of blowback that students wouldn't anticipate (e.g., imagine an employer who is a Yale alum reviewing a student's transcripts during the hiring process: Would they see the transfer out of Yale as troubling? Do they see a high "swirl" rate as a sign that a potential employee lacks commitment?)

There are also ways in which "swirling" renders a college's self-assessment problematic. If a school is surveying student attitudes or performance at various grade levels, comparing and contrasting and looking for statistical growth from freshman to senior year, what do the numbers mean if such a high percentage of those seniors have only been in residence for a year or two? Or that the freshman won't be around very long? How do retention committees and officers understand these numbers and marshal policies based on them? Even within any given academic major, swirling problematizes program review and if upper division courses have prerequisites that are built on assumptions about how those prereqs are taught locally, rather than universally, then most assumptions regarding progressive learning are essentially undermined.

Indeed, although it is nothing new (and often common among Adult and non-traditional learners) swirling requires a reformulation of not only what we mean by "traditional students" but what we mean by "progressive learning" across any given student's career. I think teachers concerned with such issues may find a review of Transformative Learning theory a worthwhile endeavor in this regard.

For the past -- what? -- seven years or so, I've been spoiled. Virtually all my classes have been either hour-and-a-halfers (i.e., a "Tuesday/Thursday" schedule) or 3 hour night classes. But this term I've got a pair of one hour (Mon/Wed/Fri) writing classes. Make that 50 minutes each, with 10 shaved off so folks can make it across campus from one class to the next.

It's common, really. I've taught one hour courses before. But this term, I'm really feeling the difference. Part of my problem is that the classes I'm teaching were all originally designed for 1.5 hour meetings, and these are redesigned calendars covering the same amount of material. I may not have planned well for the shorter hours. But that's not entirely responsible for the difference. As a teacher used to having a good 80 minutes to work with, a period with enough elbow room to pursue student questions and comments in depth, the time now zips by in the proverbial blink of an eye.

Everything's rushed. Take roll. Get everyone on topic. Move chairs, if necessary. Stick to the plan. Begrudgingly cut people off or close a conversation to move forward -- or table a point until the next meeting (and mourn whatever I'll have to sacrifice to accommodate it). Scramble to cover things they need to know for homework. Return papers as quick as I can before the next teacher comes in the room weilding a machete.

I firmly believe it is impossible to have a satisfying class discussion in 50 mins, let alone to fit in a group assignment and/or mini-lecture. In one class -- an upper division writing workshop -- we barely have enough time to discuss the assigned reading before we start critiquing manuscripts. In another class, freshman comp, the students like to talk...a LOT...and because it's a class in critical thinking as much as writing, I encourage open dialogue. But we veer chaotically off-topic quite a bit, because of competing desires for the floor.

We're meeting course objectives, sure, but it feels like we're only touching them with the very tiny tip of our fingers before people start packing their books and moving toward the door.

I'm trying to be proactive about this. Time management needs to become a bigger concern. I'm going to start crunching the one hour class. Here's some things I'm trying or considering:

• pass around a sheet for roll, so I don't chew up time ticking off names
  
• alternatively use roll call taking to have every student answer a question that's on the class topic for the day
  
• use a student to distribute handouts while I lecture/facilitate discussion
  
• use group work to allow more students to discuss while taking up less time
  
• embrace student-centeredness even more than I already do; less me time, more them time
  
• starting right on the top of the hour with an exercise that quickly gets us on track, like a one paragraph writing exercise
  
• dedicating the last five minutes of class to having students do a writing exercise or get a head start on the assigned homework...and using that time to return papers or jot down notes on what we need to do next time while they write
  
• enforce hand-raising during full class, open discussions
  
• look forward on the calendar to see if there's anything I can move out of the classroom and into homework or to drop altogether
  
• spend less time giving directions by distributing printed guidelines and asking students to read them for homework (and to come to class with questions next period)
  
• minimize transitional time-wasters, like pushing desks into a circle. I will still have a circle, but one technique I'll try is to arrive to class early and invite students to set it up before the period actually begins.
  
• show up early and put directive material on the board at the beginning of the hour; make the class outline "visible" and the homework assignment unecessary to speak aloud
  
• try to free up a few class periods for looser discussion so we can catch our breath and do some reflecting (i.e., possibly screen a film outside of class instead of in it; possibly assign peer editing outside of class as homework)
  
• rethink and reprioritize the reading selections with an eye toward cutting content that can be sacrificed; emphasize depth over breadth; possibly spread one reading out over several periods to allow deep/close reading
  

Well, that's a scattershot list of things I'm trying to do to compress time and maximize the learning that goes on in an hour. But I know that once I get another 1.5 hour class, I'll appreciate the luxury of flexible discussion time all the more.

[Things I'm thinking about in the mean time (and I invite comments). Why do we assume that MWF meetings should mostly consist of 1 hour classes in the first place? I've read that the average attention span is 20 mins... perhaps there is merit in the phrase "less is more"? Does meeting thrice work better at reinforcing course content? How free are teachers to influence the calendar, when the students' lives are organized by so many other extra-curricular elements, from sports to jobs?]

Dennis Jerz' great Literacy Weblog alerted me to a new article up at Inside Higher Ed by Shari Wilson about the problems attached to night classes that meet for three hours, once a week, called "Once a Week is Not Enough". Wilson laments the lack of learning that happens in these longer, less-frequently-meeting classes. The crux of her argument is that there are "not enough practice-and-feedback loops to help students absorb, retain and apply information" in a class that meets once a week. Conversely, in more traditional courses, "students have a chance to replay the information in their heads and practice. With the guiding hand of the instructor, they can get even more direction and be assured that they are 'getting it.'"

At Seton Hill, we offer a large number of these courses, and our facilities often seem to be running at full steam 24 hours a day. Part of the need for these one-shot classes stems from scheduling conflicts that I would call "displacement effects": art students, for example, take studios that last all afternoon long, displacing their available time for "traditional" courses to the morning and evening slots. Other displacing effects would include athletics and activities held in the afternoon, nine-to-five jobs held by more and more of our traditional-aged students (in addition to the returning adults), and certification program conflicts (almost half our students at Seton Hill, for example, are enrolled in an Education Certification program, which functions like a double-major, forcing students to take overloads and pack those classes into their schedule whenever they can if they hope to graduate in four years). On top of the displacement effects that give rise to a need for these courses are some of the other motives Wilson mentions, such as acquiring adjuncts who can only teach at night, or adopting a consumerist model of accessibility, that markets a quick and easy education to the workforce by hosting classes during what is ostensibly their "time off."

It's also a way to maximize the use of the physical plant, since classes would otherwise lie dormant in the evening. Once night courses populate a calendar, only an extremely radical revision of the schedule could change the system, and it would require adding a lot more full-time faculty to a campus' roster and perhaps even building new classrooms -- an expensive proposition. So I think most campuses that have these systems are stuck with them, to some degree.

I inevitably teach one of these three hour long night courses a term. I acknowledge that the difficulties that Wilson points to are very real -- and that it takes a certain stamina from student and teacher alike to succeed in them -- but there are also many benefits to teaching these classes and a host of strategies a teacher can adopt to make them work as best as possible.

The primary benefit of teaching a once-a-week, three-hour course is mostly evident in the amount of time you are given to work with. Having three hours allows both more flexibility and greater focus. Obviously, you have more flexibility in a class with three hours, rather than fifty minutes; if a class discussion is going well and you want to extend it, you can do so. You can commit larger blocks of time to group work, writing exercises, than you normally would, and even screen films or enact skits, and still have time for discussion afterward. It's great for writer's workshops or seminars where entire books are being discussed. I find having all that time quite useful; nothing frustrates me more in a traditional class than having to cut something productive off because of the (virtual) "bell."

As a writer, I find that teaching a once-per-week class benefits me by opening up my schedule so I have more time to write early in the day all week. I'm a morning writer -- using the first few hours of the day to focus on my own writing (the secret to my success in this regard was the realization that developing my own writing is just as important as my students', and so I try to spend as much time working on my scholarship as I do grading student papers -- and I find it easier to write in the morning (and who wants to start their day grading papers, anyway?)). Luckily, my campus usually allows me the freedom to not have any classes until 11am for this purpose. I also can spend those three extra "workday" hours on errands or class prep. Jerz and Wilson rightly note that teaching a night class often means that you get students who can't attend normal office hours, and demand extra "night" time from a teacher, since they work during the week. But I find that office hours can be adjusted tactically: hosting one office hour a week in the late afternoon (circa 4:30 or 5) can often accommodate these students as well as other traditional students who have classes during the "banking hours" when most faculty hold their usual office hours. The only drawback, really, is that fewer colleagues, staff and campus services are available at that time. But I have "regular" office hours for those needs, too. Teachers can also host "virtual" office hours and help these 9-to-5ers via e-mail or online chats.

When you first design a once-a-week class, one problem immediately arises in regards to organizing the content. Because the class meets once a week, it seems like you will have to cram what would normally be three meetings worth of material into one session. Some teachers even rotely divvy the three hours up into three lockstep units. Inevitably, as Wilson notes, teachers wind up dropping readings and assignments along the way and "shortchanging" the class, compared to what students in a thrice-per-week classroom are getting. Teaching a process-based course can suffer, if, say, drafting and revision happens in class -- if you only have 10 to 15 meetings a term, it's hard to plan serial learning. But if one adjusts by trying to teach depth rather than breadth, these problems fade away. When I teach a night class once a week, I shape it so that a lot of the reading, screening, peer-editing, and information-gathering/-digesting happens outside of class. I've used mandatory discussion board work outside of class to keep students interacting during the week (though this doesn't always work). I might set up "study groups" that encourage the students to do group work on their own combined schedules. Students come to the meeting prepared to discuss, with questions written down or a reading journal and an already-read book in their packs. When I teach film, I often assign screenings outside of the class and schedule a time slot outside of class where work study students can show the films. The idea is to "displace" as much as you can into homework without compromising the course. That means making the night class less focused on information and in-class application and more focused on process and reflection. I design the class so that individuals are doing stuff outside of class that they can't wait to share with others when we meet to pow-wow about it weekly. This approach also might mean retooling some of the course content so that it can be applied to the world outside the classroom, where students might be asked to do more homework "out in the world" rather than book learning. I might assign a paper that has students write about an observation they make in their workplace, rather than write about an article I have them read about work.

And I adjust my own work schedule accordingly, too: I often have paper deadlines later in the week, so that I can collect them and comment or grade them before the following class session. I might e-mail a handout or reading to the entire class in one batch. And I make heavy use of the reserve room, for distributing reading material I might otherwise pass out in the classroom. Sometimes, if students need more hands-on direction, I might cancel a regular class session and instead host individual or "study group" conferences spread out at different times across the week.

Teaching a three hour session can be "exhausting" for teacher and student alike, but it's important to schedule breaks (one at the midpoint, minimum) during these classes. Aside from providing intellectual and physical relief, I find these breaks helpful to mentally shift gears and move to a new topic, and I usually plan my courses around the break. Even so, sometimes it's difficult. After a full day of classes and faculty meetings and office hours, it can be almost surreal when you leave campus at ten at night, under the moonshine and the sound of crickets. I try to schedule my day so I'm not in from 8am till 10pm, but when those days have to happen, I'm sure to take it as easy as I can the following day. It's often more difficult to teach a morning class the day after a night class than it is to teach the night classes themselves. I make sure my weekly grading is done with as much discipline as I can muster, so that I'm not madly prepping or racing to grade papers to return the next morning. As with all teaching tasks, time management is crucial to organizing your life around a night class. That's something that students, too, need to learn and I do spend class time talking about study strategies for taking a night class, particularly if I have freshman taking one for the first time. I also make sure that I remain just as demanding and challenging of students in my night classes as I am in the "traditional" daily classroom. Sometimes it's not the neophyte freshman, but the student who has had a number of night classes in the past that were mismanaged (often, unfortunately, by new adjuncts that come and go in the dead of night) or treated as "education light" who are the ones that carry the wrong expectations when they enter the room, and it takes a little work to get them to respect our time together as a meaningful educational experience. If a student is having problems staying alert for three hours, or keeping up with homework, I take pains to conference with them privately early in the term to try to coach them a little in the skills it takes to succeed in a once-a-week course. I might compare it to going to church, or other rituals that often only happen once a week, but which can also be life-altering.

We were getting ready to screen a film in my Literary Criticism class. I turned out the lights and started the DVD. "How are we supposed to take notes in the dark?" a student asked. Good question. I forgot to coach them on this and regretted it. I stopped the film, turned on one of the two light switches afforded to me and took a straw poll: "How many of you want to leave one light on for note-taking?" Only one person raised her hand -- the same one who asked the question originally. "Majority rules," I said with a shrug, and resumed the film in the dark. "Do your best," I whispered. "Your eyes will adjust."

After the movie, one student chuckled. "I only wrote down one line." Most others had blank pages.

I take the blame for this. Even though time was an issue, I should have helped out before the fact.

But there's only so much help I can give them. When I was a film studies student, I always struggled with this issue myself. I have file folders filled with chicken scratch I can barely read nowadays.

When I teach film courses, I typically offer some advice that worked for me: try to write large block letters, don't be afraid to use several sheets of paper, and trust that you'll be able to read the notes later on. I suggest they buy pen lights or those lighted pens you can purchase in in gift shops (the ones that let people read in bed). I've even allowed them to flick their bics, if they carry a lighter. Anything to assist while keeping the light source low so it won't interrupt others.

We always make do. Tonight I saw a student in the class flip open her cell phone and shine the screen over her paper. I thought that was a good strategy. If I were a student today, I'd probably take notes on my PDA, which is backlit. If I had a tablet PC, that would be even better. (The lit screen might distract others in the room, but itt might even beat this curiously appealing illuminated notepad with moveable writing surface that I found on a patent list online!)

It makes sense to take notes AFTER a screening, jotting down your thoughts before you forget them and cleaning up any scribble you made during the show itself. Some people advocate not taking notes at all during the movie so as not to miss anything, but I think note-taking increases my concentration and attention while I watch. And it's much easier and more productive to take detailed notes (especially for any paper you might be writing) during a private screening at home or in a campus lab, with a finger on the pause and rewind button.

In an advice article posted at Bryn Mawr's Film Studies site, "Taking Notes on Classroom Screenings", Marianna Martin follows Timothy Corrigan's lead from his (very good) book, A Short Guide to Writing About Film, suggesting that if you begin a film with a particular task in mind -- say, paying attention to gender issues, or dialogue -- it helps guide your note-taking so you can stay focused on the movie without losing your place. I like this.

I typically take notes that mention specific shots that I will want to return to later on when I study the film later on, simple crude notes like "cross shadow on forehead, after the murder" which function as mnemonic devices for me. But it's still hard to coach students on this practice. The best thing to do, I've found in the past, is give students a list of questions or "things to look for" that might facilitate note taking. I might phrase them like this: "Welles is known for his extreme camera angles. Look for any out of the ordinary shots in the movie, and consider what they tell us about the relationship between the characters."

It's also good -- in a course where many films will be screened -- to arm students with shorthand for film language. Use it on the board or in handouts: "xcu" might mean "extreme close up" for example.

But the biggest hurdle for note-taking during screenings is letting go of our fixation on perfect penmanship. Perhaps next time I teach a film course proper, I'll run "writing in the dark" drills (just turning out the lights or having students close their eyes and then, say, writing down sentences I randomly spit out) as a method for acclimatating them to note taking during films. Heck, come to think of it, I might even try having creative writing classes freewrite with their eyes closed. Sensory deprivation, after all, can trigger interesting results.

Of course, sometimes it doesn't even matter if the notes are legible. Writing helps us process our thoughts and increases concentration on the text. The act of note-taking will "burn in" some scenes so we'll remember them later, even if we don't have our notes for review.

If anyone reading this has tips on this topic, please share. My research is turning up very little advice.

Sometimes the simplest concepts are the most problematic. Take, for example, the notion of the "credit hour." It seems like a self-evident term: one earns a college "credit" for an "hour" of academic work. But quantifying work is a very complicated affair and one "hour" of work is often a misnomer.

I've been thinking about this problem a lot recently, not only because I've hit that time of year when the grading stack avalanches down on me and I wonder whether or not I'm assigning too much. As I peruse student developmental portfolios, browse student course weblogs, and chat with faculty about the amount of reading and homework they're assigning, I really start to wonder how much is "just right" for three credit hours worth of work. Some colleagues in literature assign two or three short stories per week of reading; others assign a whole novel. When I see how much "work" students are putting into their other classes, I can't help but compare it to my own, and sometimes I end up feeling like I'm either a fascist slave driver or a dribbling softie, depending on the comparison. Perhaps that's a sign that I'm somewhere in-between and getting it just right, but since faculty seem to have such wildly disparate concepts of student workload, it's impossible to know for sure.

Although it's the gold standard for determining faculty workload and student progress toward a diploma, The "credit hour" is a slippery a concept because college students and teachers put far more "work" into a course than the typical three hours-per-week, student-in-seat interfacing. Homework, preparatory readings, office consultations...the whole gambit of learning tasks complicates matters. I try to use what I think is the "classic formula" for estimating student work: 1 hour of in-class time + 2 hours of study outside of class = one credit hour. But as Peter Ewell (from the PEW Forum on Undergraduate Learning) notes in his excellent inquiry, "Notes on the Credit Hour", there are too many inconsistencies among class approaches and that the credit hour system might be an inappropriate measurement standard for learning. Even if we set aside the impossibility of accounting for student labor outside of the classroom (though research suggests they aren't working very hard), the standards of measurement aren't "standard" at all. Different campuses design different measures of a "credit." Heck, just defining "in class" activity is slippery: some labs, internships, stage rehearsals, independent studies and other non-standard instructional activities are incongruous with the typical credit hour system.

At bottom the problem is the assumption that an hour spent in class equates with an hour of learning. But the "credit hour" could be an anachronism, given the various asynchronous methods of learning (as in online courses), and other changes that electronic media and new approaches to teaching have on the notion of "time" spent learning. Jane Wellman and Thomas Ehrlich have put a lot of work into investigating the shifts in the time and space of learning. In a Chronicle article related to their book, How the Student Credit Hour Shapes Higher Education, they recommend radical alternatives, predominantly because so much rides on the credit hour -- from faculty salaries to government funding. They smartly advocate replacing the term "hours" with "units" and suggest that emphasis on a "competency-based" system of learning assessment might be more meaningful. I haven't read this book yet, but the publisher's online excerpt from the introduction (.pdf format) suggests the following rationales for revising the system:

• The credit hour is a barrier to innovation in teaching and learning.
  
• The credit hour is a basic element of state budgets, and the measure gets in the way of budget reform.
  
• The credit hour is more often enforced as a regulatory measure in public institutions than in private institutions and within the public sector in two-year institutions more often than in four-year institutions.
  
• Innovative institutions work with and around the credit hour as a measure of student learning, but relatively few alternatives to the credit hour have occurred with respect to faculty workload.
  
• Credit hours are awarded inconsistently, with little internal policy guidance or external review about the basis for awarding them.
  

These are big institutional issues, and so much red tape has been secured to the "credit hour" that reform will be slow to come. Institutional funding and faculty workload issues are one thing, but what about student learning? Since financial aid and other forms of support require students to be enrolled "full time," at our college (which is typical of most, I think) students take 12-16 credit hours, or roughly four courses a term. This, in effect, makes sure they process out with their diplomas in four years. But some students leap for overloads because they aren't challenged, while others crumble under the weight of four when when they might more easily juggle three courses instead. At issue isn't so much the "in class" time, but the ambiguous amount of out of class work attached to any given course. While researching this topic, I found a newspaper article ("How Much Homework is Too Much?") that suggests that students can only do so much homework before their learning "plateaus" -- that is, there comes a point where doing extra homework won't do you any good. They loosely cite one study (my research suggests that it's this report from the Nat'l Center for Education Statistics), in which kids who worked on schoolwork for more than three hours a night scored lower overall than kids who had studied just 1 to 3 hours per night. I'm not sure if this holds water, because the stats tell me that the older kids get, the more extra studying pays off, but it does support the notion that maybe two hours of studying for each one hour class meeting might be "just right" for maximizing learning. Even so, time is always relative. So is learning. A "credit hour" can only operationally be defined.

As far as determining the amount of material that I put into my class assignments, I'll just have to keep trusting my gut. And keeping my ear to the ground. Talking about these things with students and faculty and administration -- and measuring them comparatively in such interdisciplinary assessment tools as developmental portfolios -- is the only way I know how to gauge whether my three credits are the same as anyone else's.

Yet again, I find inspiration in Jerz's Literacy Weblog, which is updated so often that I read it regularly. A recent entry on mobile technology muses over how cell phone customs might be behind some problematic student behavior. But in that entry he used a phrase -- "Just in Time teaching" -- which gave me pause. I'd seen him use that phrase once before, in an interesting entry about "just in time handouts", a plan to generate paper guidelines "live" in collaboration with the students in his class. In Pedablogue, I questioned the effectiveness of this method, arguing the need for a teacher to set the "rules of the game" before the fact. But seeing this phrase "just in time teaching" again made me realize that this is actually a catchphrase already in parlance that I was unaware of, rather than a term Jerz himself coined, and a quick google search on the phrase taught me something new. Now I realize that Jerz's conception of these "just in time handouts" is linked to a particular pedagogical approach outlined in a book called Just-In-Time Teaching : Blending Active Learning with Web Technology (aka "JITT").

The primary author, Gregor Novak, has a website dedicated to Just in Time Teaching that outlines the approach rather nicely and I hope you'll take a look at it, especially if you use the web for homework activities. In a nutshell, "JITT" has students answer prompts or respond to readings online with a deadline shortly before class meets. The teacher then reads this homework and decides what needs to be covered "just in time" for the upcoming class meeting. In theory, this makes students more active in their learning, better prepared for class, and ready to take their knowledge level up a notch. It also exploits web technology to help the the teacher tune in to where students are at, and what needs they have, in a way that ritualized lectures prepared too far in advance do not.

I like the ideals behind Just in Time Teaching quite a bit. It sounds good and I've used similar tactics to have students utilize web discussions before a class meets. In fact, I usually spend some time right before a class session to reflect concretely about my students' needs and either revise my course plan or come up with a new assignment "just in time" for class, irregardless of the web or homework I've already seen. Indeed, I'm not sure I always need to read this homework electronically before the fact to generate the same active environment in the classroom. But in principle, a JITT pedagogy is an engaged one, because it takes a workshop/discussion approach to the course in a way that may be more anticipatory than the usual "your homework for next time is to do XYZ" sort of manner.

A super approach. But the reality of the teacher's workload mitigates against some of this. One problem I see with JITT is the temporal burden it places on the teacher -- especially the overworked teacher who may have poor time management skills. Aside from asking the teacher to prepare the prompts and web materials in advance, it also demands the teacher do particular work at a very stressful point: up to the very last minute before a class meets. Will the teacher always be prepared "just in time"? What if they have three classes back-to-back? A night class before the morning "just in time" course? The stress of scrambling could weigh heavy and the looming deadline pressure and anxiety could backfire. If teachers don't carefully design prompts that can make the last minute scrambling to read everything optional, JITT could exhaust the teacher. And if the prompts are too directive or flat, they might not facilitate the upcoming class activities very well.

JITT prompts are essentially the same as any other form of homework, but they are tied into an upcoming class rather than graded after-the-fact. I almost always guide my assignments toward class discussions anyway, so I don't see this as an essential difference. The only difference is that I would be grading homework before a class session rather than afterwards. And that might be difficult to "time" given a heavy workload. Yet the principle of the idea is a very good one: teachers need to be just actively engaged in the class as the students are, and this approach forces teachers to do "homework" along with their students, before the class, rather than afterward -- as part of a learning process in motion, even, rather than as simply a product to be graded.

In any case, I learned a lot researching Just in Time teaching. In some ways it's a phrase for something I already do, a pedagogical approach to using the web, and a good way of thinking about course management. While I'm still not so sure that this would work with generating paper assignments, perhaps my reticence on that score is tied to my assumptions about the role of a teacher in a writing class. Regardles, I do recommend instructors consider JITT, if their students have access to the web. And if the teacher has a little time to spare before the next class begins.

Take, for example, the student who wants to use the office hour as a time to unpack all kinds of excuses for missed classes and/or late work. Most of these melodramatic performances are as boring as they are, well, dubious. So, I tell such students that I'm willing to listen to their sad tales, but only after they sign a release form giving me all rights to the material for stage, screen, and television. I mean it as a joke, although when one student laid out the story of how his ex-girlfriend let herself into his apartment (she still had a key) and took a meat cleaver to his water bed -- all this by way of explaining how his paper "drowned" -- I am now glad that I have possession of the signed form.-- Sanford Pinsker, The Irascible Professor

Ingenious thinking! I love Pinsker's idea in the article cited above, about putting a model "A" paper from the class assignment in the departmental office (or if I were doing it, online or on reserve), and demanding that students read it before they come to his office to argue for a higher grade. It turns the experience into a learning moment, even if it doesn't entirely dissuade the angry student from complaining.

I seem to get a lot of traffic during office hours, and I prefer that to the solitude that I might otherwise garner if I, say, held them at 8am or put a "do not disturb" sign on my door. Here's some random thoughts about how I approach them:

• Scheduling: I try to stagger my hours in my weekly schedule, if possible. What that means is I might hold them at 2pm on Mon/Wed and on 4pm on Tues/Thurs. Making myself available on even and odd days (e.g Mondays and Tuesdays, not just Mon Wed Fri) ensures that students will be less likely to have classes blocked out during my hours. I also recognize that students are more likely to come visit during afternoons or early evenings than early mornings. I always try to have at least one hour in the very late afternoon, for commuters or adult students: usually this is a 5-6pm block of time, scheduled right before a night class.

  
  

• Course Management: Obviously, you can get a lot of grading done during office hours, especially if no one drops by. I usually put my office hours in time slots before I have to teach, in order that I might get any last minute prepping/copying/reading done before a particular class. For classes that meet two days a week or less -- like my night classes -- I often make my office hours a paper collection deadline, asking students to drop off papers during my office hours. That often also invites some of them to drop by and talk about class issues...though many act like they have a train to catch.

  
  

• One Mandatory Meeting: In my writing classes, I typically have one mandatory meeting in my office with the student, to talk about a paper I've recently commented on. I ask them to bring their various drafts, and the readings they're responding to (or the research they've acquired, if any). I try to do this early in the term; especially with freshmen, it "humanizes" the process of learning for them, and opens many new students' eyes to the fact that office hours really are for them. After the "mandatory" meeting, which students usually find liberating in some way, I typically get a number of "returning" visits. In the very least, I know that they will be more willing to talk during class discussions. They suddenly feel a personal investment in the class they hadn't felt before.

  
  

• Consulting Hours: Maybe office hours should be "consulting hours" instead. "Office" is too officious. I find it odd that students pay thousands of dollars to consult with us in class, but rarely take advantage of the office hours. I think one of the reasons that students avoid office hours is out of fear: territorial studies would tell us that the office is the professor's "turf" whereas a classroom is more of an open field, in comparison. It's good to hold "office hours" outside of the office -- whether they're through "virtual office hours" (where you sit in a chatroom or promise to answer e-mail questions rapidly) or simply by arranging in advance to hold hours in the student union building, or a talk-friendly section of the library, or even out on the lawn. Bring a book or some papers to grade, and wait. I sometimes put post-it notes on my office door that say something like: "I'm downstairs in the cafeteria today: come join me."

  
  

• Furniture Talk: The way that desks and chairs are arranged in a professor's office send subtle signals. If you use your desk to block your doorway with a confrontational barrier like they do at, say, a police station, well then you're not only being uninviting, you're also responsible for all those nervous tics the students make when they do come talk to you. Think of the angles of the furniture: are they more "open" than "closed"? Do they invite conversation and informality, or do they put too many barriers between you and the student. While it's true that you may not want to be completely open and intimite with your students -- like, say, sitting beside them on a big puffy couch -- you might find that rearranging the furniture liberates some of the angst students have when they come to your office. So will little details like having family pictures on the desk, putting art on the walls that reflects your personality, having knick nacks or other things that students can look at when they want to avoid eye contact, or conversation pieces to get the shy ones talking...etc., etc. Be professional, yet open. [By the way, always be on the look-out for opportunities to trade office furnishings: sometimes you can get a chair or table from another building on campus, if they're refurnishing or throwing old materials out.]

  
  

• Order: This is probably my biggest weakness. And I'm not alone. Most of the professors I know are a little disorderly. We've all got too much on our mind to be troubled with filing all that paperwork on our tabletop or straightening out our bookshelves. It's tough to keep everything organized and in its place. I'm terrible with my inbox: it's still overflowing with last year's flyers and invitations. I've also still got a poster/calendar from 2002 on the wall. But I know I can do better. I'm not anal retentive about keeping my office clean and organized, but I do believe that the messier it is, the less respect I get from students (though I'm sure most of their dorm rooms are probably condemnable). Students expect their leaders to be more organized than they are; some go so far as to assume that a disorderly office is a reflection of a disorderly mind. You don't want to deck out the office with chiffon and make it look like a setpiece from The Stepford Wives, but you don't want it to smell like a locker room, either. At the bare minimum, I try to give my office the once-over at least once during winter and summer breaks -- even going so far as to clean things that the cleaning staff misses (like the windows). I've also made use of work study students before, asking them to help me reorder my bookshelves or sort through paperwork.

  
  

• Student Management: I always enjoy meeting with students and discussing course material, their lives, and even just shooting the breeze. But sometimes students wear out their welcome or haunt my doorstep. And you can always reposition the furniture or change your hours if you find yourself being pulled into a quagmire of endless student meetings that spill over beyond your regular hours and so forth. There are ways of managing students during office hours without resorting to offensive tactics or pleading cries of overwork. The best way, of course, is to use appointment scheduling effectively. Make appointments that have time limits in advance. Sometimes, you can line up these appointments, too, so that the student feels the weight of the people lining up outside the door. Another strategy is to end the consultation just as one would end a committee meeting when the hour is up: wind up the conversation by summarizing the key issues, and then breaking out the calendar and asking the student to schedule a follow-up to discuss them. Give them an "out" if they don't want to continue talking. You can also just start using phrases like "Next time we meet, we'll discuss X" or "Journal about that topic and let me read your thoughts when I grade it later on." Highlight the larger context of the conversation, as part of a larger process of learning. Sometimes you have to be firm. Set ground rules for any follow-up meeting: "Next time we talk, bring your textbook with specific questions about the reading."
  

Not every "tip" above will work for you and perhaps some would totally backfire and make more work. I know that there's a trade-off we make when we open ourselves up to extra office visits. It's more work, for one thing. And there often comes a point where students begin to treat their teachers like personal therapists, father/mother figures, or best buddies -- blurring the boundaries of professionalism and confusing the student's role as learner with some other role.

But sometimes the openness can pay off in other ways. Some students work harder to get an "A"; students write better evaluations; students are more openly engaged in class discussions. Some have been kind enough to bring me coffee or other treats, though I typically don't invite that. I've had students come to me to discuss --- gasp! -- independent research in literary theory and to talk about readings we didn't get to discuss openly in class. And when I'm sitting in my office, talking with a student about issues for their own sake, or to help the student with something they want to learn just because they want to learn it -- rather than just for the sake of a grade -- then that's when I know I'm doing office hours right.

Hmm.... I might develop this into an article some day. Post your own tips here, by clicking on "comments" below, if you like!

Over the break, my colleague, Lee Tobin-McClain had an article come out in The Chronicle of Higher Ed (I think this is #4 for her at The Chronicle!). It's a great self-help piece on Time Management for New Faculty. Highly recommended reading! (I'm the guy she mentions who usually doesn't come in until 11 am because he tries to do scholarship/creative writing every morning, by the way. Does it work? Hell yes! (What she neglects to mention is that I have to teach NIGHT CLASSES to make my schedule happen this way...it's not really less work).

If this article goes into the pay-only archives, query Lee about either acquiring a copy or where you might read a reprint.

[It's funny: perceiving this as a need among the new cadre at SHU last term, I requested the dean host a "Teaching/Learning Forum" on this very topic -- "time management." She seemed game. I hope I didn't unknowingly sign up my colleague for extra work! Oh well -- that's what she gets for not telling me about this article when I had lunch with her the other day. I learned about it from another colleague's blog (Thanks again, Dennis Jerz!)]

On this topic, I've discussed time management tips for teachers in this blog before. I've also discussed an article that claims some teachers "launder time" the way criminals launder money. McClain recommends Dick Bolles' What Color is My Parachute for to do list prioritization; I recommend David Allen's Gettting Things Done.